BOB FAW, correspondent: If you’d like to know what a hospice chaplain does, watch Kerry Egan in New Bedford, Massachusetts as she visits seventy-one-year-old Jim Burgo, who didn’t want his face shown and who is dying from liver disease.

JIM BURGO: I don’t want to suffer. I know I am going to die, but I don’t want to suffer.

FAW: At life’s end, when Burgo is anguished and needs to talk about dying, the hospice chaplain listens and comforts.

BURGO: There are a lot of things about Vietnam that I am not proud of either.

KERRY EGAN: And I think God forgives those things.

BURGO: I hope so. I really hope so.

FAW: If one aspect of her healing ministry can be somber, her visit to the Fall River home of ninety-seven-year-old Mary Labrie shows another.

Singing: “When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory.”

FAW: Here the mood is upbeat, because Mary, unlike Jim Burgo, faces death with absolutely no fear—indeed, looks forward to being in heaven and being reunited with her late husband of 75 years.

MARY LABRIE: Oh yeah, I’ll see them again. We will all be together one day.

EFAN: What will be like, being together again?

LABRIE: Oh, that will be wonderful.

FAW: Kerry Egan counsels people of all different faiths, and not all of her patients are religious. But the common thread in her work, she says, is helping people give meaning to their lives.

EGAN: How do you make sense of all of this that is going on in your life? For every person that I go in to see, my goal is the same, which is to find out what their goal is, to help them meet it.

FAW: A chaplain for thirteen years, Kerry Egan says that what is crucial is learning how to listen.

EGAN: I hear terrible stories sometimes—terrible stories, and the most compassionate thing you can do is not turn away. Oftentimes for you to go in and say, “It’s okay. It’s okay,” when they full well know it is not okay, it shuts them up. So now they can’t say, “I’m frightened. I’m angry. I’m confused,” because now they need to act like everything is okay.

FAW: Listening is the most important thing?

EGAN: Yes. Deeply listening to what it is they’re saying.

FAW: Kerry says something was brewing with Jim Burgo. Finally, she understood. His father had taken him away from his mother when he was very young, and Burgo was afraid it was going to happen again.

EGAN: So are are you afraid that you will die and you’ll go to heaven?

BURGO: I am not afraid of going to heaven.

EGAN: I know, but that your mother and father will be there, and your father will take your mother away again?

BURGO: That is very, very possible in my mind, yeah.

EGAN: Well, there’s no point in sugarcoating it, right? That’s not helpful. If someone is dying, and they’re sick, they know it.

(reading from Bible): “…teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always…”

LABRIE: Oh, that is my favorite verse.

EGAN: I know it is.

Some people really come to the end, and they feel good. You know, they’ve done a lifetime of work and of thinking about this and they just want someone to be there with them, to sort of enforce those strengths they already have.

FAW: But others struggle, and Kerry Egan tries to see them come to terms with what ultimately matters.

EGAN: For some people there’s an incredible relief to have someone come in and say, “What did this all mean? What did my life mean? What does my death mean? Why am I sick? Is there a God? Is there a God who knows I’m sick? Is there a God who cares that I am sick?”

FAW: For a while, what Kerry couldn’t understand was why her patients talk to a chaplain so much about their families.

EGAN: It took me a long time to realize that is how people are talking about God. Again, they might not use the term “God,” but that’s how they talk about ultimate meaning. They’re trying to get at love. They’re trying to get at what God is. Jim is a great example of that. He was talking about his mother, and he was talking about love. What does the love of God look like? Am I going to get to see my mother again? Is the love my father showed me or didn’t show me, is that what God is like?

FAW: Raised Catholic, now an Episcopalian, Kerry Egan isn’t always successful. One patient actually threw a bedpan at her. But Jim Burgo’s wife, Elaine, says that every time hospice chaplain Egan visits, Jim isn’t the only one who benefits.

ELAINE BURGO: She helps me by helping him. If I want to talk, I know she is there, and she’s just an excellent, excellent listener. We don’t only discuss the Holy Spirit and God. I know she is there just knowing he is going to die. If I want to discuss anything, she is available.

FAW: Just a few months ago, Mary was near death. Kerry and the hospice team brought her back to good health, and it was only with Kerry, says Mary’s daughter, Judy, that Mary was able to reveal how she worried about the grief her death would bring her children.

JUDY BIDDLE: It gave me that peace, knowing that Mom is not in denial, that she was just worried about us. She was worried about us children. That was really precious. You know, it’s so good to have someone from outside the family that she can share with, so that she might say things to Kerry that she might not feel comfortable sharing with me as a daughter.

FAW: Family members, of course, are not the only ones who appreciate Kerry.

JIM BURGO (to Kerry Egan): You make people better. You explain God to me. You’ve given me a whole bunch.

FAW: You read the Bible sometimes.

MARY LABRIE: I read it every day.

FAW: Every day.

LABRIE: And there is some good information there to keep you going if you are concerned about things.

FAW: And seeing Kerry, does that help you keep going too?

LABRIE: Oh, yes.

FAW: Kerry meets every day with members of the hospice team. This day she talks with nurse Patty Martin about Mary’s progress.

PATTY MARTIN (to Chaplain Egan): She’s walking around. She is eating better. She is gaining weight.

FAW: Mary is doing so well soon she will have to be taken off hospice care. That worries Kerry because for patients it’s hard to lose the care they’ve come to depend upon. It’s just another issue a hospice chaplain confronts. What helps her cope and decompress, says Egan, is a happy home life: two children, a supportive husband, two dogs. She prays, meditates, hikes, and dances. It helps, too, she concedes, to maintain a certain distance from her patients.

EGAN: I have to remember that it’s not about me, right? It’s not personal. I’m a passing person in their life. You know, I’m not his wife, I’m not his daughter, I’m not his mother. Not even his best friend. You know, I’m his chaplain, and that’s a very different role.

FAW: And when that distancing isn’t enough, Kerry says, she relies on her faith.

EGAN: That gives me a lot of strength to do this. To be able to say that this is not the end and that life is hard, and really hard things happen but that we can be with each other. We can help each other through it, and that is how God functions in this world.

FAW: With Jim Burgo or with Mary, Kerry Egan says she’s learned that while there are miracles, her role is not to be a miracle worker.

EGAN: It really is between the patient and God, right? And that the patient and God are going to do the work. It’s not like I have some magical presence in there. Not at all.

FAW: And what does Kerry get out of it?

EGAN: I get enormous joy. People know so much more than they think they know when they’re allowed to explore it themselves, and God is so much more present than anybody usually gives God credit for. And I get to see that. I get to know that.

FAW: Caring for them when their bodies are failing and their spiritual needs are crying out, too.

EGAN (to Jim Burgo): You’re such a good man.

BURGO: I am not, but someday…

FAW: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Bob Faw in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

ABERNETHY: We are sorry to add that shortly after that interview Jim Burgo died.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the Associated Press this week that if the top military officer recommends an end to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy relating to homosexuals he will okay the new rules before he retires the end of June. Gates also said he sees no barrier to that happening. Since Congress repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell last December, more than a million US troops have taken instruction in the new policy. Gates says that training has gone well. Still, there are concerns, especially among some military chaplains. Betty Rollin reports.

Gunnery Sergeant Taylor conducting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell training: Lance Corporal A, he’s gay. Lance Corporal B and Lance Corporal C are his roommates. They know he’s gay, or they think he’s gay, but due to the fact that he dresses in a certain way they request to move out of their room. Do they have that right?

BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: Here at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia, as well as at other military bases, they’ve been holding voluntary training sessions on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: What does it mean? What changes? What doesn’t change?

Training session slide presentation with narration: You are not expected to change your personal, religious, or moral beliefs; however, you are expected to treat all others with dignity and respect consistent with the core values that already exist within the Marine Corps.

ROLLIN: The Marines in this group didn’t seem to have any trouble with these instructions.

CORPORAL JASMINE CASTENADA: The most important thing we are still Marines in the end. We sign a contract, and we are still going to follow orders. We are still going to wear the same uniform. So when we go into combat it’s not going to matter if a Marine is straight or gay.

SERGEANT CRAIG TAYLOR:: I’m a Baptist, but the role that my religion plays is not really important because I have to adhere to the rules and regulations that are governed over me.

ROLLIN: A Pentagon study released last fall showed that a majority of US forces, 70 percent, said that serving with gays or lesbians would have no negative effect on them. But there was a very different response from forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fifty-eight percent of combat Marines said they would prefer not to serve with gays. Another group that has voiced concerns about the repeal are chaplains. Of the 3,000 active-duty chaplains, a majority are conservative Christians. Brigadier General Douglas Lee has served over 31 years as both a reserve and active duty chaplain and now heads the joint commission that represents Presbyterian and Reformed chaplains. He is one of 66 retired chaplains who wrote a letter to President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates urging them not to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

CHAPLAIN DOUGLAS LEE: Homosexuality is one of a multitude of sins. Chaplains essentially help people wrestle with the sins that beset them in their lives and try and give them encourage and hope and a way out of all that, and for the Christian the way out is Jesus Christ. For another religion it might be some other means. The problem with this repeal is that this particular sin is being legitimized as being normal and okay.

ROLLIN: Whereas some chaplains support the repeal, and all chaplains accept their obligation to minister to everyone, Chaplain Lee fears the conflict conservative Christian chaplains are bound to have when counseling openly gay service members.

LEE: Chaplains are concerned that when it comes to the bold preaching, teaching, counseling, marrying, burying, sacramental duties, that there would be challenges to those things if they were decided to speak against homosexuality.

ROLLIN: These chaplains fear that if they express what they really believe they might lose their jobs.

LEE: We believe there needs to be a freedom of conscience clause somewhere Congress has to wrestle with to make sure that chaplains and the troops have freedom of conscience when it comes to proclaiming their own particular faith, and of course they would do that. We would never want that proclamation to be done in a mean-spirited way or hateful way.

ROLLIN: The underlying cause for conservative chaplains’ difficulty with repeal is their belief that homosexuality, like all the other sins in the Bible, is a choice.

LEE: Just to say they can easily choose to get out of this, I wouldn’t say that. I would say it’d probably be a struggle for many. But I know people who have come out of the homosexual community and basically through Christ have actually changed their choices.

JONATHAN HOPKINS: My parents were devout Christians. My values are pretty consistent with theirs. I grew up in a town of 1,000 people, and within my parents’ view that didn’t fit with being gay, so of course I was straight. You had to be straight to be successful. But that was a lie. It was a lie to myself. I told my Mom for the first time when I was 30 or 31 years old and I said, Mom, I spent 20, nearly 20 years of my 30-year existence trying to fight this everywhere I could, or find some way around it, or finding, okay, maybe if I just find the right girl I won’t be gay. But that’s just impossible. It’s a lie.

ROLLIN: Jonathan Hopkins graduated fourth in his class at West Point and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was awarded three bronze stars and was promoted unusually early in his career to Major. And then, last August, it was all over. Although he says many of his fellow soldiers knew he was gay and accepted him, a few didn’t and reported him to the commander. After a 14-month investigation, he was honorably discharged. Hopkins says throughout his military service he was afraid of this happening.

HOPKINS: Sometimes you might be scared of getting shot at, but you shouldn’t have to be scared of your own fellow service members turning you in for something that you can’t change.

ROLLIN: Hopkins is now a graduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and a spokesman for Outserve, an organization representing active-duty gays in the military. He says he is optimistic about the repeal and its future.

HOPKINS: Will repeal go through? Yes. And once that happens and nothing substantive goes wrong, then it’ll be a done deal.

ROLLIN: So the war is won, in effect?

HOPKINS: It’s not a war. It’s not a war.

ROLLIN: What is it?

HOPKINS: It’s just people trying to serve their country. It’s just people trying to be treated as people, as upstanding Americans. It’s the most American of things there is.

ROLLIN: Under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, 13,000 gay and lesbian members of the military were dismissed. The military plans to finish training for the repeal this summer. After that, if the president, secretary of defense, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that the military is ready for this change, 60 days later the repeal becomes official.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Betty Rollin in Quantico, Virginia.

ABERNETHY: The answer to that question about whether Marines can ask not to share a room with another Marine just because they say he’s gay is no.

SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: If you want to get up close and personal with the global economy, there are few better places to go than the Port of New York and New Jersey. Here, merchant ships arrive from around the world, delivering mountains of cargo containers full of everything from plasma screen televisions to blue jeans, all imports bound for store shelves across America.

Chaplain (speaking at religious service in ship’s galley): The Lord be with you.

Mariners: And also with you.

Chaplain: Let us pray.

GONZALEZ: However, this port and the ships that dock here are also where a group of chaplains operate an unusual maritime ministry: offering spiritual comfort and a helping hand to the world’s seafarers.

Chaplains (speaking at religious service): In peace we pray to you Lord God. Oh Lord, we pray for all mariners, that you will guard and protect us in dangers at sea and temptations ashore.

GONZALEZ: The chaplains belong to the Seamen’s Church Institute or SCI, an Episcopal group that’s become the largest service agency for mariners in the United States.

REV. DAVID RIDER (Seamen’s Church Institute executive director, speaking to other chaplains): Okay, my friends, what’s up today? What’s in port and where do we need to go?

GONZALEZ: SCI’s executive director is the Reverend David Rider

RIDER: We serve the spiritual and humanitarian needs of seafarers through worship, through practical support like connecting the family back home, occasional human rights violations, occasional illness or death—those types of crises ministries we’re involved with to ease the burden on seafarers.

GONZALEZ: SCI has been part of life on New York’s waterfront since its founding in 1834, when it soon established a floating dockside chapel. It was a time when sailors’ lives at sea could be brutal and their earnings while ashore quickly blown on booze and brothels.

RIDER: The average lifespan of a seafarer from the day he started was 12 years. The natural calamities at sea and disease in the nineteenth century and dangers ashore did not bode well for a typical seafarer.

GONZALEZ: SCI now operates programs at both coastal and inland ports in the United States. Most of the chaplains’ work involves visiting ships and their crews—2,000 vessels annually in the New York area alone.

Chaplains greeting mariners on board ship: Good morning. Good afternoon. We have lots of gifts for your. Hello! Bonjour mes amis! Tu vas bien? Hello.

GONZALEZ: Once aboard, the chaplains both conduct religious services requested by the crew and, without proselytizing, give the men an opportunity to share their thoughts and troubles after a long voyage.

REV. MEGAN SANDERS (speaking to mariner): What’s your family like? Do you have mother, father?

MARINER: Yeah. I’m still single.

SANDERS: You’re still single? That’s good. You’re saving your money.

GONZALEZ: SCI chaplain Megan Sanders says her conversations with mariners often involve how they keep their faith at sea.

SANDERS: They don’t have a physical church that they can go to every Sunday or every Friday or every Saturday, and so we want to instill in them the knowledge that they carry their God and their relationship with their God with them, and that God enfolds the people that they love that they don’t have the privilege of being with every day.

GONZALEZ: Much has changed in the maritime industry since the days of wooden ships and cloth sails, but for seafarers an ancient problem still persists. It’s the isolation, sometimes loneliness, of life spent out on the open ocean. Freighter captain Diomedes Cabatic is familiar with those feelings. He’s been at sea for over 20 years but says he hasn’t gotten used to long separations from his wife and children back in the Philippines.

DIOMEDES CABATIC: Nine months.

GONZALEZ: Nine months you are away from home?

CABATIC: Nine to 10 months.

GONZALEZ: It’s a lot of time.

CABATIC: A lot of time, because we need to earn money for our family. That’s why we need to go away from our family.

GONZALEZ: But I imagine sometimes when you think about your wife and your three kids it’s difficult.

CABATIC: Yes, it’s difficult to be away with them.

Chaplains talking to mariner: Do you remember the last time you topped it off? When is the last time you talked?

Mariner: Three months.

Chaplain: Three monts. So it might still be okay. We’ll have to check it.

GONZALEZ: After weeks of being out of easy communication with loved ones while at sea, mariners in port, like the men of the freighter Zim Rio Grande, are eager to contact family and friends back home.

Chaplains: I think he’s looking for a T-Mobile SIM card. A SIM card? Okay, I have one right here.

GONZALEZ: The chaplains get many requests to help crew members make cell phone calls and get prepaid calling cards.

REV. MAJORIE LINDSTROM: So phone cards and top-off cards are very important. It gives them the ability to call when they are close to the coast, all times of the day. They don’t have to depend on going to a seafarers’ center or something else to make a call.

GONZALEZ: Vladimir Kurshenko, a young sea cadet from Ukraine on his second voyage, is still getting used to being away from home for so long.

VLADIMIR KURSHENKO: I am ready for this work. I’m ready to work like this, to have no contact with my family for a long time. What can I do?

GONZALEZ: It’s the life?

KURSHENKO: Yeah, it’s the life.

GONZALEZ: In the past, seafarers could have looked forward to several days of shore leave to unwind after a long voyage, but both increased post-9/11 security at American ports and the “time is money” pressures of international trade make it difficult for mariners to venture far from their ships.

RIDER: Now the turn-around time is much faster because of automation and cranes, and especially on the container ships they can be in and out of here in 18 hours, where in the old days it might have been four or five days. In 18 hours, you are still working because there is work to do during the time at berth.

GONZALEZ: If sailors do have a few hours of free time, SCI runs a seafarers welcome center in the heart of the port. Sailors can come to relax, use phones, and check in with families on the Internet.

Chaplain blessing mariner: Henry, I bless you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

GONZALEZ: Port chaplains like Marjorie Lindstrom say the public doesn’t appreciate the role sailors play in the global economy and the hard and dangerous work involved in getting goods across the sea.

LINDSTROM: You know, they think about goods, they think about the money, and the seafarers, the soul of those operations, are frequently ignored or forgotten or not even acknowledged, and they are the invisible. They go from port to port to port, and everywhere they go they are aliens. They are foreigners in a strange land.

GONZALEZ: Reverend Rider says his “on the waterfront” ministry reflects the spiritual dimension of seafaring and the comfort sailors have placed over the centuries in their faith.

RIDER: Cross the North Atlantic in January, feel your ship rolling as you are even in bed, and much like a soldier in a military situation, thinking about divine support and sustenance can become very basic. It is not an abstraction for a seafarer on a bad day. Being out at sea can be beautiful or haunting, and seafarers know both realities. Their experience of God can become very basic, either God’s presence or God’s absence, and they know that in the depths of their soul and, again, in some small way we’re privileged to hear their stories.

Chaplain blessing mariner: Beseeching Him to uphold you and fill you with His grace…

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly I’m Saul Gonzalez at the Port of New York and New Jersey.

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ROB BUNDY (Buddhist Chaplain Trainee, speaking to patient): Instead of pushing that pain away, just let it be. You are not the pain. That pain is something that doesn’t have to be who you are. Just let your breath take that pain away from you. Beautiful.

BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: Rob Bundy is one of 24 Buddhist chaplains-in-training at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.

BUNDY: Just breathe down into that pain.

ROLLIN: Audrey Alasia has multiple diseases of the spinal cord and is in constant pain. Rob uses the Buddhist techniques of meditation, visualization, and a focus on breathing to help ease Audrey’s suffering.

BUNDY: The pain comes and goes, right?

AUDREY ALASIA: Yes.

ROBERT CHODO JUSSEI CAMPBELL: In our practice as contemplatives, as Buddhists, as many other contemplatives do, it’s to come back to the moment. What’s happening right now? Come back to your breath. Can you breathe right now? Everything else is going on, but can you come back to the breath? Can we slow it down a little? Can we start to relax?

KOSHIN PALEY ELLISON: I think one of the most important things you can do for someone is to hear their pain and how miserable they are.

CHODO CAMPBELL: Rather than “You’re going to be fine, Mom. You will be home in a couple of days, the operation was a success, bought some flowers, you know, you are going to be great. You will be back on your feet again soon.” That’s not addressing what’s happening to me right now.

ROLLIN: Chodo Campbell and Koshin Ellison, both Buddhist monks, are co-founders and directors of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which runs Beth Israel’s Buddhist chaplaincy program, the only accredited clinical program of its kind. Chodo and Koshin minister to patients themselves and train others, who are both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Chaplains may also provide their special kind of care to patients’ families and staff. Part of the chaplain’s training consists of learning about other faith traditions. Sister Maureen Mitchell is there to answer questions about Catholicism.

BUNDY (speaking during training seminar): Is it inappropriate for me as a Buddhist to make the sign of the cross as I am helping a Catholic or praying with a Catholic?

SISTER MAUREEN MITCHELL (Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor, Veterans Affairs Hospital): No, it’s not inappropriate. For you to join with the person may give them great joy. They also might think they are converting you.

ROLLIN: Rabbi Jeffrey Silberman is one of the Jewish instructors.

RABBI JEFFREY SILBERMAN (Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor, Norwalk Hospital): When do you offer direct prayer to people that you are working with?

ANNE REIGELUTH (Buddhist Chaplain Trainee): Most patients you can ask them just would you like prayer, and they will tell you.

(Praying at patient’s bedside): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may Anne be at ease. May she be free of all pain and suffering.

ROLLIN: As part of the medical team, chaplains often provide insight about the spiritual needs of patients. Buddhists relate to patients in a non-theistic way.

CHODO CAMPBELL: Many chaplains coming into a hospital, they are coming from a theology, and they are coming from a doctrine, that this is what you do, this is how you tend to the sick. You give them the sacraments; you give them the last rites, whatever it is. For us, we are coming in from a place of just being present to whatever is arising in the moment.

KOSHIN PALEY ELLISON: I was training with other seminarians of Christian or Jewish tradition and sometimes their theologies would be an obstacle in connecting to a patient, because they had ideas about, and moralistic views from their tradition.

ROLLIN: Patients usually request chaplains of their own religion, but Buddhists tend to go everywhere, although Chodo has found that not every patient welcomes him at the start.

CHODO CAMPBELL: I knocked on the door, and I said, “Hi, Mr …. I’m the chaplain on the floor.” And then, “Are you a Jew?” I said, “No.” He said, “Get out!” And I said, “Okay.” He said, “Where are you going?” “I’m leaving. You told me to get out.” “He said, “Get back in here,” and I sat down and he said, “So what are you?” And I said, “I’m a Buddhist,” and he said, “Really? Tell me,” and this was the beginning of the most wonderful relationship I had with many patients in this hospital.

BETTY ROLLIN: Chaplain services of any kind are not covered by insurance. Hospitals usually pay for them, but they do not pay for Buddhist chaplains, who are privately funded. Buddhist interns are not paid at all. Paid or not, the Buddhist chaplains get a lot of appreciation not only from patients, but from staff.

SHIRLEY ESCALA, RN (Patient Care Services, Oncology, Beth Israel Medical Center): When you have nurses who are so busy and who are taking care of cancer patients, or even in the CCU, patients who have just had heart attacks or are in hypertensive crisis, and sometimes you have a patient who just wants to sit and talk, and my nurses do the best they can, but they don’t always have the time. So this is another way to support a patient that’s just incredibly valuable, and they’re able to make them look at things in a contemplative way, being present in the moment, and that helps calm, relax. It brings peace.

ELAINE MESZAROS, RN (Clinical Nurse Specialist, Oncology, Beth Israel Medical Center): If they are calm as we are trying to treat them, they actually get better sooner in terms of their outlook.

CHODO CAMPBELL (praying with patient): I pray that you watch over him…

ROLLIN: Hospitals don’t need Buddhists, but they provide something that more and more hospitals are unable to give to patients—time and loving attention.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Betty Rollin in New York.

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Several studies recently have addressed the religious interest, or lack of it, of young adults. We wondered how religion is faring on college campuses. Lucky Severson visited Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island to find out.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Catholic Mass in the Manning Chapel at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. There are many other things these students could be doing on a bright Sunday morning, but they are here, trying to connect to a higher power, or maybe just to themselves, and asking for help for others.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT (praying): For my friend who’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor and for her family, we pray to the Lord.

STUDENTS (responding in unison): Lord, hear our prayer.

SEVERSON: The Protestant service that morning was conducted by Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, Brown’s chief chaplain.

At Brown, like most universities, you can find almost any religion or no religion at all. But you will also discover an increasing number of students who are searching for some sort of spirituality in their lives.

Reverend JANET COOPER NELSON (University Chaplain, Brown University): If you took a group of Brown students and did what we call a forced choice exercise — go to one end of the room if you are religious, go to the other end of the room if you are spiritual — two thirds of the students would be on the spiritual end. But the kids on the religious end would say, “Well, I’m not so sure about whether you could be spiritual if you are not religious somehow.”

LAURA BROWN-LAVOIE (Student, Brown University): There was something that Confucius was trying to get to about our inner humanity or something.

SEVERSON: Laura Brown-Lavoie is searching in a class on Chinese religions. She was raised in a Unitarian Universalist church.

Ms. BROWN-LAVOIE: It’s hard for a lot of people in my generation raised in that church, because we never really started with a mystical thing, and so I’m just getting to it now where I’m finding paths to mysticism on my own.

SEVERSON: Andrew Mathis is a sophomore who grew up a Catholic, but at Brown he was drawn to Buddhism and the art of Chinese lion dancing.

ANDREW MATHIS (Student, Brown University): I think the best thing about Buddhism is for every — not belief; for every idea that is presented in Buddhism there’s a clause: “Just don’t take this because somebody said so or you’ve read it, but do it because you experiment with it. You incorporate it into your life, and you know this is true.”

SEVERSON: Rabbi Alan Flam is a chaplain who heads the school’s Center for Public Service. He says students are searching for spirituality through public service.

Rabbi ALAN FLAM (Swearer Center for Public Service, Brown University): I also think the language of social justice is speaking more and more to students — that they want to live out their convictions not necessarily from a religious doctrine but from a commitment to other people and the world. And I’m not certain our institutions have responded as nimbly as they should to some of those challenges.

SEVERSON: Senior Danyel Currie thinks too many churches are missing the boat.

Ms. DANYEL CURRIE (Student, Brown Univeristy): I think it’s been a great failure of the church to basically isolate certain issues in order divide people into a kind of us versus them. There are so many other things the Bible talks about, you know, that are relevant, that people need to know about. People need to know that God cares about social justice.

SEVERSON: Danyel plans to attend divinity school after she graduates. She says her faith has grown much stronger because she has had to defend it, to others and herself.

Ms. CURRIE: First semester I’m coming here, there’s all these philosophical arguments against the existence of God, and I can’t defend any single one of them. The professor is, you know, atheist, and I’m just kind of like, “God, I don’t know, but at the end of the day I still believe you’re real.”

Rev. NELSON: One of the things in the university we are endlessly trying to say is your spiritual tradition, the literatures of your tradition, have to be interrogated. Not all my clergy colleagues agree with me about that. Some people think nope, the Bible said it, I believe it, that’s all there is to it.

Ms. CURRIE: I had to learn that it was OK to approach the Bible and approach God in a very intellectual way and to say this doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t mean that, you know, I can’t be a Christian anymore.

SEVERSON: Searching is encouraged here. So is questioning, even for students like Nate Johnson, son of missionaries, who felt he had to defend his faith when he first got here.

NATE JOHNSON (Student, Brown University): “This kid’s far out. He’s really in the midst of the right-wing evangelical conspiracy.” So it’s pretty crazy. Then they are shocked and then they are, like, “OK, OK, I need to respect his viewpoint.” Sometimes I feel am I talking about my faith too much? Am I annoying people? A lot more times I feel like I’m not talking enough because I don’t want people to not like me.

SEVERSON: Nate belongs to the Brown Christian Fellowship. He says as a born-again Christian he is often asked his view on gay marriage.

Mr. JOHNSON: I would say that I probably don’t attach as much importance to it as a political issue as my parent’s generation, because I see it in a different light. I still don’t believe that homosexuality is in accordance with God’s plan, but I also see that there’s a lot of love and compassion that God wants us to have.

SEVERSON: Every Thursday night there’s an interfaith supper at Reverend Nelson’s house. It’s a long-standing tradition, holding true to the reason Brown was founded. Back then, other Ivy League schools limited enrollment to specific denominations. Brown was Baptist, but welcomed students of all religious persuasions.

Yael Richardson, a Jew, and Atena Asiaii, a Muslim, roomed together at Interfaith House, a dorm that fosters interfaith dialogue. These two women from very different religious backgrounds became very close friends.

YAEL RICHARDSON (Student, Brown University): If I perchance would have a frustration with my religious community, with the Jewish community around here, then I could voice them to Atena and she would totally understand, because she experiences very similar things.

ATENA ASIAII (Student, Brown University): We had a conversation before about Muslim women leading prayer and Jewish women wanting to lead services as well, and it’s just nice to have someone to talk to who is going through that from a different perspective.

SEVERSON: Brown employs a full-time multifaith staff of five chaplains and is one of the few universities with a Muslim chaplain, Rumee Ahmed.

Reverend RUMEE AHMED (Chaplain, Brown University): I find that students are questioning their beliefs before they even get into the university, and the university is the opportunity for them to express those doubts.

SEVERSON: Noor Najeeb has had plenty of doubts and lots of questions, especially since 9/11. Noor is at a gathering breaking the fast during Ramadan.

NOOR SHEKH NAJEEB (Student, Brown University): If I didn’t want to be Muslim, I could just float through life not having these issues, not having to be questioned, not having to defend myself and my beliefs on a constant basis. But at the same time that defense — not really defense, that questioning makes you question yourself, and in questioning yourself you realize your identity.

SEVERSON: It’s not that there aren’t skeptics and atheists at Brown, but even those students, like Sarah Goldstein, seem to draw a distinction between religion and spirituality.

SARAH GOLDSTEIN (Student, Brown University): For a lot of people, maybe a belief in God is something that like sort of fills you up and like overwhelms you in a certain sense. And I feel, like, I get that feeling from others things, like, call it spirituality, I don’t know.

SEVERSON: Reverend Nelson is concerned that more and more students will be skeptical of organized religion if religious institutions don’t start dealing with more relevant issues.

Rev. NELSON: We are going to be faced with everything from stem cell decisions to genetic engineering to evolutionary questions to moral questions in this society about whether there should or shouldn’t be torture.

SEVERSON: You think that churches ought to be dealing with issues like that?

Rev. NELSON: I think they must deal with them, and when they don’t, students then say religion is inadequate. Spirituality is where I belong. And they’re right if religion is not about those issues that are framing a human life.

SEVERSON: If Brown students are typical, and most surveys show they are, the good news is that today’s college kids are resolved to find something to believe in and to make the world a more just place.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson at Brown University.